New Year’s Eve: How firecrackers brought war to Germany

Germany

We all know the discussion. She is not new. It comes up again every year. At the end of the year. Should we ban firecrackers?

New Year’s has always been a strange day for me. Random people pick some random day of the year to find some reason to get drunk and make noise.

As a child and teenager, I wasn’t aware of what we were doing with it. Everyone did it – and traditions are beautiful.

Now I became – surprise!! – grown up.

Apparently not everyone can claim that. Because people are still arguing in the most childish way about whether or not this terribly meaningless tradition should be banned. After all, it’s a tradition! Give people their damn freedom! Firecrackers are awesome! My rejection, my – yes almost – disgust, on the other hand, has become stronger and stronger over the years.

But well… what do I know?

Most of the arguments are familiar: Climate, animal welfare, environmental protection. And then there is the high risk of injury. All well and good. convinced me Easy. Ticked off. end bang! I don’t take part in this crap anymore. Count me among your hated left and woken bubble. I do not mind it. What does she know, this boring aunt?

Well, something changed for me this year.

Something I’m actually ashamed of not having planned sooner.

I was at war. I was under fire. I watched artillery explode in the street – and I fucking heard it!

Ever since I first came back from the war in Ukraine, I’ve become much more sensitive to the world. How else should it be? My first visit to the country where a dictatorial bastard terrorizes and murders people ended in the Luhansk region. In a city that fell three weeks after my visit: Lysychansk.

I saw how much people suffered from the bombs. I myself took shelter one day in a house that was being deliberately attacked by Russian forces.

When I was back in Germany, I subconsciously checked every sound very carefully. BANG! Just a false start. BANG! A car crash. Hissing, whistling, BANG! Where did that come from? Oh yes: fireworks. Whether from a wedding or just some idiots who just wanted to make noise. I was reminded of the bombs over and over again.

I wouldn’t say I’m traumatized. I’ve been there two more times since my first visit. I was in Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Kyiv, Bucha, in many other small towns and most recently in Bakhmut – the current hotspot. the front. During my time on site I have never dealt with any consequences such as injury or death. I was lucky.

Nothing more: just luck!

Other people weren’t so lucky. Around 900,000 Ukrainian refugees have been living in Germany since the illegal invasion on February 24. Many of them have witnessed friends, their children, parents and grandparents being injured or killed. Some were injured themselves. Many lived in filthy basements for weeks or months to protect themselves from hell from heaven. Only ate when aid organizations brought something over. Drinking water? none.

Bachmut, mid-December: An elderly resident walks along damaged buildings with her caneImage: AP / Libkos

So here you come: Who of the “BÖLLER!!!” screamers can claim to have heard artillery shells or rockets falling from the sky? Which one of you “freedom” brawlers has ever been in serious danger of life because projectiles rained down on you? Have you ever had to leave your whole life behind, send your children to war and run for your life at the same time because a helicopter gunship is flying overhead and shooting down indiscriminately?

Maybe there is one or the other. Perhaps. But the majority of those living here in Germany did not have to make these experiences. And that’s just as well! I don’t wish that on anyone. It’s no fun! And it can end up being fatal.

What I want is empathy.

And here I come back to a sentence that came out rather casually at the beginning of this text: I am ashamed. I’m ashamed that I haven’t been able to muster that empathy for years. That I first had to experience what others have experienced in order to understand them. To sympathize with them.

Because refugees from the Ukraine are not the only ones here in Germany who can be re-traumatized by a single New Year’s Eve. Far too many people are fleeing war and terror. From around the world.

I had a conversation with a trauma therapist about this in the middle of the year. He told me that just a sound or something someone says could evoke the trauma. “A kind of memory trace forms in the brain, which is then activated,” said psychiatrist Sergiy Davydenko at the time. A thunderstorm or the noise of an airplane is enough to trigger flashbacks of wartime experiences.

A friend who fled Syria told me he couldn’t watch the news programs about the war in Ukraine because it reminded him too much of his lost home.

When I showed a video of my work in the Luhansk region to a woman who had fled the Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv, she started crying.

A friend of mine has been an activist in war zones for ten years. He told me he still winces at every false start of a bike.

If everyday noises alone can cause a trauma to boil up – then what will New Year’s Eve firecrackers awaken?

Smoke, whistling, hissing, cracking: all of this can revive trauma.Image: dpa / Thomas Frey

We just bang like that without consideration, senseless, without need – because we want it. Again and again we bring war and death right here in the form of terribly painful memories. Straight to peaceful Germany. We let people who have experienced terrible things relive those experiences. And year after year! For fun.

But well… Just fight for your freedom not to have to think of others. Fight for your right to be ruthless.

What do I know?